CD Reviews

My favorite Barney Kessel recording

Phasedin | New Jersey | 07/01/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The late jazz guiarist Barney Kessel was well-know for his straight ahead jazz playing primarily. However, unlike his contemporaries, Kessel during his long carreer often went in the direction of attempting to make crossover records that skirted pop music of the 50's, 60's, and 70's. These were primarily rock-tinged oriented recordings of then-current pop hits-stuff like music from "Hair" and the "Age of Aquarius" type things. Listening to them years later kind of revealed these recordings to be less than artistic attempts to tap into a more youthful market and the pop mainstream. Those particular recordings (and I have a couple of them) sound horribly dated-I couldn't really picture too many people listening to them nowadays to be honest. In fact those offerings sound much more dated than Kessel's recordings of straight-ahead jazz made even 15 years or more before the commerical sidetrips.However, as a result of Kessel's keeping up with the contemporary music scene also meant he had bigger ears-and indeed would take biger chances than most of the jazz musicians of his generation and backround.In the case of this recording "Barney Kessel & Friends" we have some really nice jazz with a bit of a contemporary vibe (of the era) that actually works for the most part.Perhaps true classic jazz recordings are often hard to tell exactly what era they were recorded in, this one does speak very much of the mid 1970's-when it was recorded, and there's one or two slips into a dated "hip" sound. But for the most part, the music works and the band is small enough to hear the individual musicians, but big enough for enough variety of sound to keep the date from get too boring or samey sounding.Although the CD itself lists no recording date (very unusual for Concord Records, or any Jazz label to not list a date), 2 tracks from this were later released on a very good Kessel compilation of The Concord Records years and both tracks were listed as being from April 1975-so i'll guess the other tracks are from the same sessions and time period.A nice band with some real nice flute work featured as well, the music ranges from straight ahead mainstream jazz, to mellow easy listening (actually my favorite tracks) to a bit more modern almost Fusion flavored things.This is also the only Kessel recording i'm aware of (though there may be others) that features only original compositions by Kessel himself-which, for me, adds to the overall positive listening experience.Also a great great band: Herbie Steward-reeds & flute, Barney Kessel-guitar, Jimmy Rowles-acoustic & electric keyboards, Vic Feldman-vibraphone, Chuck Domanico-Bass, Milt Holland-percussion, & Jake Hanna-drums. One of the few recordings of Kessel with some electric keyboards,vibraphone, percussionist, and flute, so it stands out as a pretty unique carrer offering.R.I.P. Barney"